Chapter 3: The ‘How’ of Visualization

While you don’t need special times to practice visualization (we’ll talk about that a little bit later), it’s incredibly helpful and beneficial for you to spend and dedicate between five and ten minutes every day, whether it is in the morning or in the evening.

It can also be very helpful to do it twice daily because it’ll be a way to teach your mind how to create a daily connection between your desire and the Universe.

As your mind is more used to this mental exercise, you’ll notice that, as you go on through your day, you’ll be naturally engaging your mind in the same visualization exercises (without having to sit down and close your eyes).

This is an amazing state because you’ll not only be visualizing when you sit for a few minutes but you’ll be doing so for the whole day.

This is called FOCUS, a powerful and often underappreciated tool that, without it, nothing can be accomplished.

So let’s get into the nitty gritty of how to practice this useful art…

We can start by doing a small an easy exercise for you to practice it with your meta-story (you do have it, right?).

These would be the best steps for you to to visualize it and, eventually, achieve it:

1.Go to a quiet place where you are completely sure nothing and nobody will disturb you.

2.Calm your mind and body by sitting (or standing) in a position that is very comfortable for you, and breathe in and out deeply.

This helps the mind cool down and calm the unnecessary thoughts for you to gain focus.

A SUPER easy to do this: when you breathe in, say (internally) MA; and when you breathe out, say OM.

Once you feel very calm and relaxed…

3.Read your meta-story out loud, and set your alarm to go off in 5 minutes.

During those full 5 minutes, you will…

4. Get into the experience of it as if you were living it at the present moment.

Use also the senses and emotions that you discovered worked best for you.

5.Pack the visualization with deep emotions so they are not “just thoughts” but, instead, powerful energy forces that’ll impact your subconscious and the Universe.

6.Go wild with those emotions, feelings, and the overall experience.

7.Once the five minutes are up, say a deeply felt “thank you” and continue your day.

You may think that this last “thank you” is insignificant.

It is not.

When we are visualizing without gratitude, and striving to accomplish our goals without appreciating what we already have, we’re doing something “tricky” to our soul.

We are putting a lot of focus into the future and thus reinforcing an idea that “we are not satisfied with the present situation”, and this can be terribly harmful to the mind.

Dreams and desires should always be in conjunction with a profound sense of gratitude for what we already have.

This allows us always to be in a spirit of acceptance for the present moment, a key mental and emotional state for us to feel happy at any given time.

When all we focus on is the future, on what we want to have but “still don’t”, when our thoughts revolve only around dreams and desires and no space for gratitude is practiced, what we will become is deeply unsatisfied persons.

There is no such thing as happiness without acceptance and gratitude.

So, the same way you’re about to create the habit of visualization, create the habit of gratitude too.

They are part of the same effort.

If it works for you, this is what I do every morning to establish gratitude in my life:

I wake up, and from the moment I open my eyes until I sit down to do my meditation, I say “thank you” for everything I see in my way.

I say “thank you” for:
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Having been given a new day, again.

Having a comfortable bed to sleep on, every night.

Being able to have healthy legs and walk easily.

Having a house to live in, a toilet to go to, money to be able to buy my toothbrush, deodorant, etc.

Having water every day for a shower.

Being able to make myself a nice coffee.

And so on…

This happens as I wake up, go to the toilet, have a shower, dress, prepare my coffee, and sit to meditate.

It’s only a 15-30 minute period of time, but it leaves room for a constant prayer of gratitude for me to not take for granted all the things I have in my life.

This practice also creates a very powerful thing for me: a great positive mental state to go through during the rest of the day.

So now, going back to visualizing, I also want to emphasize how important it is to relax when we start out.

For many of us, this will be a new habit in our lives, or maybe a practice that was not learned correctly and we now have to re-learn it again.

As the primary focus is vividly experiencing the object/circumstance of our desire, and we want to live it with intense emotion so we can influence our subconscious mind, the body and mind need to be in a deeply relaxed state.

When we are in that state our brain-wave pattern changes and it go slower, also known as alpha level.

Numerous studies have discovered that the alpha level is a very healthy state of consciousness.

It has such a deep and relaxed attribute that it significantly impacts the mind and body.

Also, these studies found out that it is a much more useful state for us to create real lasting changes in our lives, by using the art of visualization.

This is a great piece of information for us because if we learn to relax deeply and use that state to practice our visualization, what we are capable of reaches heights that seemed unreal in the past.

Even though visualizing is something that can be done at any time of the day, when we are starting out (and maybe always), using the calmest and serene hours of the day gives us the right energy environment to engage as effectively as possible.

These hours tend to be during sunrise, or before going to bed.

As you can see visualizing is an easy action.

It may happen to you that you find a little bit of difficulty at the beginning when you try to “live the experience as vividly as possible.”

Don’t worry.

For many of us, this is normal because it’s the first time we try it and therefore just need a little bit of practice; a practice that will eventually create and give our minds the necessary tools to be able to visualize with emotion, and easily.

“We are what and where we are because we have first imagined it.” – DONALD CURTIS

Setting goals is also as important as the exercise of visualization, for the obvious reasons…

How can we achieve exactly what we want if we haven’t made the effort to know exactly what we want?

Setting them is the first step for turning them from mere wishes and hopes into part of our reality.

It’s like as if the Supreme Intelligence will fill any gap there is when you create highly emotional thoughts.

And let us not forget that… all goal setting and visualizing exercises must be followed by immediate action.

Again, I believe there are many people in love with the notion of visualizing and then “waiting until it happens.”

That is not how the Universe works.

The art of visualizing is just a part of the process; a necessary one, but just a part of it.

Your efforts of action, if you want them to be effective and bring results, must be followed by:

1.The development of a plan, ideally by modeling the path taken by someone who has or is where you want to be/have.

2.Massive and consistent daily action towards its achievement.

Setting goals, visualizing every day, and taking action every day means that we have changed our desires and dreams from “I wish” to “I will.”

Think about the latter statement.

It’s a presupposition, a state of mind where we already know and have complete certainty that we will get what we want.

Why?

Certainly not because we sit to visualize every day and then engage in marathons of “Friends” episodes…

…but because we are committed to figuring out what we want, condition our minds to create the right vibration to receive it, and take so much action every day that it’d be virtually impossible the Universe doesn’t respond to our honest effort.

These three pillars are the foundations where an incredible inner certainty is built.

Just “imagining” things certainly does not provide that.

No one in history has ever achieved his/her desires by being interested in their achievement.

They were instead committed to doing whatever is necessary to achieve it.

I’ve done myself a lot of studying of people who tend to be role models for a lot of us and I’ve discovered that many times (many more than you can imagine) persistence and commitment completely overshadows talent as the most practical resource for achieving dreams and goals.

These high achievers, many times, were not people who got it right the first time (aka the first 1-10 years).

The genius action they all shared is that they stuck to their pursuit of their goal, discovering and developing their muscle of persistence along the way, changing their approach as many times as necessary until they finally got it.

For you to enjoy the same level of results these individuals experienced you must condition your mind and your actions with the same methods they used.

It doesn’t matter which goals and dreams you have, at the end of the day, the approach is always incredibly similar:

1.You get clear and certain about your desires and dreams through goal setting.

2.You condition your mind to their achievement through the art of visualization, doing it twice a day until it becomes so automatic that you “catch” yourself several times visualizing during your day.

3.You condition your actions by doing everything that is necessary, every day, so you go to sleep with a deep inner feeling of having given your all that day.

4.Repeat steps 1, 2 and 3

The above process beats any resistance, lack of talent, lack of money, or any difficult situation you might currently have.

I can assure you that.

On an end note for this chapter, I want to say that many times we think that achieving a dream or goal is “the end.”

But if we make an effort to look deeper and attain a greater understanding of the Universe we’ll understand that it’s not the attainment of the desire in itself and not even the feelings of pleasure of its attainment.

The “gold” or “blessing” we’re after… is the better version of ourselves we become along the way.

For all of us, committing to attain a goal will mean making changes and adjustments in many aspects of our lives.

Failure to make these changes will mean failure of achieving our goals/dreams.

And success in making them will not only mean attainment of our desires but an incredible growth of ourselves as human beings.

Growth that is not only a benefit for you but also for humanity.

Goals are a means to an end, not the purpose of our lives.

They are an effective tool to helps us gain focus in our lives and bring out the necessary personality qualities for their achievement, thus igniting personal and spiritual growth, the true purpose in life and the only one that brings lasting fulfillment.

Achieving goals brings momentary feelings of pleasure, feelings that can last a day, a week, or maybe even a month… but, eventually, the pleasure of its attainment wears off.

Therefore, achieving goals will not bring us fulfillment in the long term; it’s who we become along the way, the even better version of ourselves that is necessary for us to achieve what we want, that can give us the deepest and long-lasting feelings of fulfillment.

Let us use this knowledge to not get caught up when we feel like “failures” because we are not manifesting things as fast as we’d like to, and instead learn to enjoy the journey as the Universe is offering it to us.